Crocodile Rock

The original illustration for "The Crocodile's 25th Year"
before re-arranging and cutting imagery and covering
much of it with text.  View the completed comic here:
http://tinyurl.com/j239b8f

This week marks the three-year anniversary of my comics publishing adventures, and I'm happy to announce that I have a comic appearing in the Seattle Weekly.  The comic tells a brief history of The Crocodile, a Seattle music club that is celebrating its 25th year anniversary this year.

The image on the left is the original illustration before I tweaked things and covered a lot of it with text boxes.  You can acquire the original up at my Etsy shop.  You can check out the final story at Seattle Weekly - and feel free to share the link - here: 

http://tinyurl.com/j239b8f

The Barrett Martin Group is hosting one of several anniversary shows for The Crocodile on Friday, June 17th.  I write more about this below, and you can get full details on The Crocodile website here.

Because there is so much more to the story than I could fit into the comic, and because I was able to interview Scott McCaughey and Barrett Martin - two musicians who feature prominently in the venue's history - I'd like to share more of the story here.

Crocodile Cafe & Live Bait Lounge

It was the early 1990s, Seattle music was coming alive and a music-loving lawyer by the name of Stephanie Dorgan decided she wanted to open a rock venue.  She threw in with several other investors and procured the former home of a Greek cafe called The Athens, on 2200 2nd Avenue, which had stood empty for over a decade.  Renovations were made and the first show was played on April 30th of 1991 by The Posies and Love Battery. 

Crocodile Cafe management was devoted to supporting local music, as well as creating a welcome stop for prominent touring acts.  Seattle PI's John Marshall reported "A now-legendary Croc double bill, with a $3 ticket, took place on Oct. 4, 1992, and featured Mudhoney and Nirvana (billed that night as Pen Cap Chew). A 1996 gig by Cheap Trick included a surprise appearance by Pearl Jam."

Some of the fellows from Young Fresh Fellows.
Scott McCaughey went on to play with
REM, The Minus 5, The Venus 3
and The Baseball Project.

Stephanie started out as a hands-on owner, enlisting her sisters in the venture, including hiring Constance Dorgan as the venue Manager.  It's one of the details mentioned by Scott McCaughey.  "It was always great to have one of the Dorgan sisters around.  They practically lived there."  Scott's band, The Young Fresh Fellows, has been referred to as Crocodile Cafe's house band and he served as a talent buyer there for several years.

He said that management lived up to their claim of going out of their way to treat bands well.  "Bands received 90% of the door after a reasonable fee.  If you had any kind of draw at all, Crocodile Cafe was an oasis for touring musicians."  He also noted that if an act DIDN'T have a draw the first time you played at "The Croc," you'd likely have one the second time around.  "Guided by Voices is the perfect example.  They played their first show to less than 100 people.  The Crocodile Cafe lost money, but it was an amazing show.  Guided by Voices sold out every Seattle show they played after that."

Death and Rebirth of The Crocodile

Did I mention the Crocodile Cafe had art?  In the truly grungy back bar they sometimes rotated out art shows.  Last I was there, the ceiling was adorned by sheep that seemed to be constructed from spray foam, farting neon lightning bolts as they swayed from their wires.  I think the sheep were still there at the last show of the old Crocodile, a Saturday night set by Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), J. Tillman (Fleet Foxes, The Lashes) and David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) in December of 2007.  

A tiny 2.5 x 2.5 inch portrait of Stephanie Dorgan and
Peter Buck that didn't make the Seattle Weekly comic.
There wasn't enough room to give it the context it deserved.

The next day, staff received voicemails from Stephanie Dorgan telling them that they were terminated, immediately, as the Crocodile was closed due to financial difficulties.  No formal statement regarding the closure was issued to the press, and this cartoonist doesn't have the story.  There's a good summary of the chain of events leading up to the closure on the 10 Things Zine website here, complimented by many other articles you can find on the web.

Of note, Stephanie had two children with REM's Peter Buck in 1994.  The couple divorced in 2006.  It's easy to imagine the rigors of family life taking energy away from a founder's original labor of love.  It's possible to believe that a spouse with considerable income might take the urgency out of budget balancing and penny pinching to keep a club operating in the black. 

Whatever the reason, Stephanie Dorgan was finished running the Crocodile.  She sold the business to a group of partners led by bar owner Marcus Charles.  The investing group renovated the facilities, bringing it up to speed with both Seattle's new codes for night clubs and Belltown's fancier feel.  The bar became a little more upscale (the farting sheep replaced by giant glossy performance photos from the Grunge Era glory years), and the show room was developed to be a more accommodating performance venue.  The sound system was improved, a lush green room added, and the bands played on.

Barrett Martin Celebrates 25 Years of The Crocodile

The Crocodile opened again in March of 2008.  One of the first performances was a semi-reunion

show by Soundgarden.  It featured Soundgarden with a notable exception: Seattle musician Tad Doyle standing in for Chris Cornell.  With the appearance of "TADGarden" it was clear that The Crocodile was still a place for local artist to perform, try out new things and showcase side projects.

Barrett Martin
Photo by Dean Karr

Barrett Martin was one of the musicians who performed during the early years of Crocodile Cafe as a member of Skin Yard and Screaming Trees.  In 1994 he joined musicians from Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains for a surprise performance at Crocodile Cafe that signaled the birth of their new band, Mad Season.   In 1996, Barrett worked with Peter Buck, Skerik and other musicians on a project they called Tuatara.  Tuatara expanded and changed over the years, eventually engaging Scott McCaughey.  (Note to reader:  I was not aware of this at the time that I decided to interview Barrett and Scott independently.  The more you know...)

Barrett is producing a 25-year celebration showcase to The Crocodile on Friday, June 17th.  "I wanted the show to engage old Seattle, new Seattle and something that is new to Seattle.  That's what The Crocodile is about." he said.  "Noelle Tannen, for example.  She's a singer/songwriter from Brooklyn, but with roots in Seattle.  She's opening.  Vaudeville Etiquette are a Seattle band and one of the best bands I've worked with as a producer."

An iteration of Tuatara will appear as well as the Barrett Martin Group.  While I am unsure of who will be performing in what constellation, you can expect to see some really good collaboration between musicians like Barrett with Skerik (Critters Buggin), Chris Ballew (The Presidents), Ayrone Jones, Tyan Waters (Prince, Sade's bands) Kathy Moore (The Guessing Game), Jen Ayers (Teatro Zinzanni) and more.

Tickets and additional information about the show can be procured here. 

This was difficult.  I could only put the tiniest fraction of information in the Seattle Weekly comic.  But at least I got to draw some awesome artists and organizers and hopefully get people interested in a bit more of Seattle's music history. 

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Answering to History

Issue #3 of editor and cartoonist
Shing Yin Khor's "Blood Root" anthologies.

 In 2014, I created Jezinkas, a 17-page comics adaptation of a Bohemian folktale about witches who stole people's eyes.  It was in response to a call for intelligent horror stories to be included in Blood Root #3 by Sawdust Press.  Blood Root is a really great anthology and, though the print version is sold out, you can obtain a pay-what-you-want digital download of the book HERE. 

Jezinkas is my only fictional comic in print, to date.  It was fun story to build because I got to draw things like people turning into wolves, owls without eyes and other visually astonishing scenes that don't occur in my life naturally.  The best part, though, was that I didn't have to check and double-check facts, scour and question my memories or consider the impact of my work on people who might be effected by my telling of a real-life story.   

Illustrating Rock History 

Enter comics journalism.  I love the Pacific Northwest's rich music history. When nostalgia drove me to illustrate the building that once housed the OK Hotel, lovers of the now-defunct music venue urged me to draw more.  

Panel from the history comic
of Hollywood's Club Lingerie.

I began interviewing people connected to the OK and drew my first history comic.  It was terrifying because I didn't want to misrepresent anything.  Not all details can be verified.  People had different versions of the same night or notorious story.  I chose to frame episodes as either my own personal take or in the context of "this source said..."

It's how I came to comics.  I created two more venue histories - for Albuquerque's Dingo Bar and Hollywood's Club Lingerie - and now I'm working on an abbreviated comics history of a 4th venue for publication soon.  I haven't been able to reach everyone I wanted to vet, but I'm doing my best to be true to facts and the spirit of the club's history.

My Story Is. . .Well. . .My Story.

Autobiography may share nonfiction status with comics journalism, but I'm coming to it with a little more confidence.

I don't have to research the plot points, for one thing.

Panels from my comic
chronicling the history of the
Chicago Picasso

I will proceed very, very carefully in choosing how to frame where my life intersects with others, though.  And I will never adopt the voice of authority in reporting on historical moments.  There are tragedies in my life, for example, that effected A LOT of people, and everyone involved experienced those events in their own way.  Or, as anyone who has been through a break-up can attest, different people have different views on shared experiences. 

The best thing I know to do is present my story as my story - personally impactful, potentially flawed and ultimately vulnerable.  But I feel that the insights I have encountered are worth sharing, and the story has been pressing me to be told. 

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Night of the Crow

 

Quoth the raven...

I have friends who call me a synchronicity vortex.  My life is riddled with strange coincidences and deep irony.  It's why I say I'm spiritual but not religious.  I've seen too many things come together at once to know that more than human consciousness is at work in this world.

This week, I've been finishing a 4-page comic called "Night of the Crow."  It's a surrealistic bit of  autobiography from my life as a painter, after completing an exhibit of giant crow paintings at the Balazo Gallery on Mission Street in San Francisco.  The show got great reviews, my house mate installed the paintings in our space when I returned, and then things started to get strange.

Me and my housie, circa 2004

A Sacramento Side Story

One of the hardest things about putting together my graphic novel, Girl On The Road, is that there is no way to include everything that happened in the time frame that the story spans.  Paranormal crow activity may be interesting, but I think including this incident would take away from the story arc and make for a disjointed reader experience.  Sacramento is a featured location, but the events from Night of the Crow are probably not going to make it into the Girl On The Road script.

That is why I am super-psyched that I'll be able to tell the story in a different venue.  The anthology it will be published in doesn't go to print until 2017, so it will be really fun to file it away and forget about it.  When I finally see it in book format it will feel like a Christmas present.

Some nights are like that.

Home Schooling

My main reason for finishing Night of the Crow this week is that I wanted to

learn from executing the story.  I need more practice with both character development and the human figure.  I also have to get used to drawing myself, over and over and over again.  Just doing four pages of self portraits made me feel like a narcissist.  200 pages will take some getting used too.

So, Night of the Crow.  It was not directly working on the graphic novel, but I feel more confident returning to the big project having test-run some new techniques in a tiny story.

One More Awesome Side Project

I'll be working on one more awesome side project - a collaboration with comics writer Anne Bean.  She is one of the people who has already received an Artist Trust grant to build a suite of new comics with a different illustrator taking on each story.  We're creating a full-length minicomic adaptation of the Nez Perce story of Coyote and Butterfly Woman.  I'm VERY excited to work with Native themes and anthropomorphic imagery.  The story is under production and scheduled to be premiered at Seattle's Short Run Comix & Arts Festival. 

Short Run Is Accepting Applications

The Short Run Comix & Arts Festival is now accepting exhibitors applications, by the way.  Check it out.

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

The Grants Game, Part 3 - Superstition

Time . . . Enough

Roy from Blade Runner.
That guy never forgets his deadlines.

If you're an artist looking for grant funding, Seattle is a pretty great place to be.  We likely have more grant sources for individual creators than almost anywhere else in the United States.

That also means more deadlines.  Today I completed an application to an agency called Artist Trust for their GAP (Grants for Artists Projects) fund. 

I'm not usually one to finish an application on the day it's due.  I keep this very exacting spreadsheet of deadlines--for anthologies, grants, whatever needs hitting--and I try to get things done ahead of time.  Especially for grants.  Even on a fairly easy application I schedule a minimum of 8 hours to complete it.  EIGHT.  Because, for me, it's not writing the narrative that gets me.  It's the time it takes to format files and upload them that is the killer.

If you are submitting 10 pages of comics, and maybe you have them in a PDF at 600 dpi for printing.  But the granting agency wants them in individual JPGs at 72 dpi but at a minimum of 1920 dpi on the long edge but with a file size no larger than 5 mb.  MATH!  My arch enemy.  This is exactly what I was up against today.  Then actually uploading and labeling the files is taking the grantmaker's online system forever.  Then I'm standing in the rain like Rutger Hauer, gripping my hand and pleading with the universe for more time.

Clocking in at a mere 4.7 MB!

Very Superstitious

Ah well, I did get everything uploaded and the submission is in.  

I had the exact same problem uploading files for the City Artist grant I submitted earlier this year.  I wasn't this hard up against the deadline, but I was having plenty of trouble with their online grants submission site.  I was cursing the screen while I watched the spinning beach ball of doom that is Macintosh telling me that it's processing something.  And I was listening to an album that I consider part of the soundtrack to my graphic novel - So Tonight That I May See by Mazzy Star.

The album hit it's last song and I got panicky.  "If my files aren't uploaded by the end of the album, I won't get the grant!" THAT is what my brain suddenly decided to throw at me.  It makes no sense.  I have no idea where it came from.  I tried to tell myself it was ridiculous.  But I was still deeply relieved when the uploads finished before the final strains of the song.

Even when I was grantwriting for agencies, everyone had rituals and superstitions.  There were grant dances.  Laying of the hands on the outgoing paper proposal.  Always the constant race to the post office.  (At least THAT part has been eliminated by online submissions)

It's Only Weird If It Doesn't Work

I'm not a huge sports fan, but when the Seattle Seahawks went to the Superbowl, they ran an ad campaign highlighting people's sometimes odd "lucky" game day traditions.  The catch phrase was "It's Only Weird If It Doesn't Work."

I was awarded the CityArtist grant.  So there's that.

I'm not encouraging superstition, but if you've got something that works for you, then go for it.

My lucky Star.

And, of course, give yourself enough time.

I really don't know how I feel about the application I turned in today.  I could have used one more

night to sleep on it and do a FINAL final review.  I'm just glad that I went through the process--don't ask don't get.  Extra score bonus:  I now have an updated artist resume and I also articulated a sub-theme of my graphic novel that I hadn't really pinned down before.

Also--true story--I took myself out to lunch to celebrate/recover and the diner was playing Mazzy Star, Fade Into You.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Though I Walk Through The Shadow of Uncanny Valley . . .

Mark Campos at Bistro Montage in Portland,
featured here with Moxie, My Sweet.

Living with a fellow cartoonist has its benefits, particularly when they are a long-standing feature in the minicomics world.  My housie Mark Campos wrote the anthology Moxie, My Sweet - illustrated by some of the finest cartoonists Seattle has to offer - and has drawn stories for anthologies like Not My Small Diary and Fantagraphics Treasury of Mini Comix.  Mark is not only experienced in the practical aspects of making comics, his head is full of cartooning history and theory.

I'm not like that.  My comics tool kit contains little more than combining a disparate background in fine arts and poetry as an approach to telling stories.  I have limited knowledge of the medium and it's context and having seasoned cartoonists to turn to while I attempt creating a graphic memoir is invaluable.

Uncanny, Isn't It?

Panel with self-portrait on a Chicago train platform.
What is wrong with this picture?

Creating Girl On The Road hasn't been precisely "Write script. Grab pen. GO!"  I've had to make decisions as simple as page size and as difficult as fictionalizing elements of an autobiographical story.  Somewhere in between, how to stylistically approach drawing people is one of the hardest things I've wrestled with.

The book is partially travelogue, so I want backgrounds that deliver a specific location in the story. But the core story is relational, so I want characters that are expressive.

My attempts at marrying photo-realism and expressiveness have not gotten me where I'm going yet.

Back to Mark Campos.  As I sit cursing at the kitchen table over the fact that an image I drew straight from photo reference looks like a mutant, he factually chimes in "It's 'Uncanny Valley'."  And DAMMIT if he's not right.  It is.

Things That Look Almost Human Creep Us Out

Screen grab from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
by comics blogger Coelasquid.

Uncanny Valley is a term developed by people in robotics.  As certain corporations race to invent the humanoid robot that everyone will love, they keep running into the problem that robots that look like humans freak real humans out. 

There's a dry Wikipedia article about it, but I found an absolutely AWESOME blog about the Uncanny Valley effect as it relates to comics here.  Funny as hell.  References Soundgarden.  You should check out "Close But No Cigar" on Manly Guys Doing Manly Things and get a hard laugh out of it as well as some good information.

What I got out of it was reinforcement that I need to put my hands up and step away from the light table.  My just-slightly-off photo-realistic drawings of people are just-slightly-off-putting.  Even if I had an exact photo reference for every panel of the book, it wouldn't be enough to carry the characters.  But at least I have something of a measure to judge against when assessing my next crop of drawings.  It might keep my book from falling into the Uncanny Valley.

Thanks, Mark.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

Draft title page for my sample
chapter "Girl On The Road,
I-90 1994"

As part of my grant proposals in support of the graphic novel, I outlined that I would use my blog to document my process as I go.  Well, I've officially dived into the drawing portion of things, and here's where I'm at.

Discipline 

I've been told more than one time that I need to write every day to be a writer, told to draw every day to be a cartoonist, and famously informed by the poet Eileen Myles "You wanna write a book?  Write a book. That's the only way you're gonna write one."  So OK.  There are things I'll finally be applying to accomplish my first graphic novel. 

 

Here's my short list:

Draw A Page A Day

At least draw every day, with the goal of a page a day, six days out of the week.  I'm only on page #4, so my due date for raw art on my sample chapter is going to be the end of May.  Since my first and second days were dedicated to an elaborate front cover image set in a sunflower field and an equally elaborate draft title page (above), I'm hoping I can complete two or more pages of art on some days to make up for the truly challenging visuals.

Schedule Business Hours

On the seventh day, I blog.  I build and update my website.  I finally scan work to my ETSY shop (Check check).  I research outside work and draw commissions.  I'm going to concentrate on scheduling as much of the work as I can for completion on Tuesdays.

Just Say No

Panel detail from page #4. 
The Chicago Picasso!

I said yes to a lot of really interesting projects over the past year - most of which somehow culminated over the span of only a few recent weeks.  I love anthologies.  I love art galleries.  I've thoroughly enjoyed creating work for themed art shows.  AND I'm not going to get any further towards my aims as an artist until I complete a graphic novel.

So I need to apply some pretty strict criteria to what I say "yes" to moving forward.  Basically, unless it's a paid illustration gig or something I have a truly deep personal connection to and can complete in a reasonable amount of time, I'm going to be turning projects down.

I am going to contribute to My Small Diary Issue #19 and, of course, Prince did just pass away, so yes to the Prince-themed art show, dammit.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Killing Gone Girl

 Gone Girl Comics is Dead

I wrote last August about the origins of Gone Girl Comics (here).  The long and short of it is that I created a manuscript under the title of Gone Girl and failed to copyright it.

Now that there is a famous mystery novel and movie by that name, I don't want any confusion with the book's author or her intellectual property, so I'm killing the title Gone Girl in my images, books and web presence moving forward.

For the curious:  I did NOT receive a cease and desist letter, or encounter any other legal issues.  I'm just doing what makes sense to me for the long run.

 

New URLs All Around

I'm unifying everything webby under NoelFranklinArt and changing the blog and book title to Girl On The Road.  If you are reading this blog now, you've already found me - I've archived all the previous blogs here under noelfranklinart.blogspot.com and created a rudimentary redirect page at the old URL.

As much of a pain as this is, I'm happy to be doing it now and not later down the road.  A full list of my current social media links is building on the sidebar.  ==>

I will still be selling previously created copies of Gone Girl Comics #1 and #2 but will likely not self-publish more short stories collections anytime soon, as I'm focussing on a full-length graphic novel.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.